The last eight weeks or more have proven a challenging time for the Lee’s Summit R-7 School District. And that doesn’t have a thing to do with the barrage of winter that has stolen a day or more every week since Christmas break.

I think Mr. Rogers would most certainly have fit in well in downtown Lee’s Summit. Business neighbors. Friend neighbors. Customer and client neighbors. All is a geographically tiny area of a massive 65-square-mile city.

A letter sent to the Lee’s Summit R-7 Board of Education by officers of the Lee’s Summit chapter of the National Education Association pulls no punches: do not renew Dr. Dennis Carpenter’s contract, they implore.

I lost track of how many times KCUR Up to Date host Steve Kraske tried to steer his recent conversation with Lee’s Summit R-7 Superintendent Dennis Carpenter to race and race relations. Carpenter did what he could to refocus the discussion, but after 15-20 minutes or so, we unfortunately learned little if anything about recent boundary changes and...

I don’t typically do resolutions each New Year. I can resolve to do better, work harder, sleep more, workout regularly, all of that. And, really, we can all set goals that are attainable, not outlandish, and strive to hit them during the course of the 12 months ahead of us.

I think it would have been quite a thing to sit and listen to Ferrell Shuck and Wilbur F. Storey sit and opine over a beer or two. Storey was the fiery editor and owner of such papers as the Free Press and the Times in Detroit and Chicago. He once famously exclaimed, “It is the newspaper’s duty to print and news and raise hell.” I cannot agree with that statement more wholeheartedly.

After a lengthy process (involving a citizen-led team we should profusely thank, more on that later), lots of headaches, heartaches, heartburn, public gnashing, near-fainting on social media and lots of discussions seeming to ominously foreshadow a mental health crisis if a kiddo is forced to attend a different school than the year before, we finally have our boundary changes.

Transparency. Communication. These have been the assurances coming from Lee’s Summit R-7 Superintendent Dr. Dennis Carpenter, administrators, Board of Education members and candidates for the board during the past three years as the district looks to move on from a series of public relations stumbles related to past decisions from the superintendent on down.

Silver lining here in Jackson County from last week’s election: at least we’re not Broward County, Florida. A whopping 67 percent of registered voters came out to weigh in on everything from Jefferson City representation to judges and pot to fixing potholes.

Like most of Addy’s outdoor soccer seasons at Legacy Park, this one featured all the seasons in eight weeks. While bone-chilling winds are the norm at this park, we also had our fair share of high-noon sweating, drizzle and rain-outs and one — one — beautifully autumn-like day.

Impressive, intrepid investment is happening in all corners of our downtown Lee’s Summit. It’s a byproduct of years of investment, decades (nearly 30 years in fact) of Main Street involvement, support from the city and belief of business owners, volunteers and supporters that downtown Lee’s Summit is absolutely the gem of our now 153-year-old city.

Mike Allen could sit in his conference room all day and talk about the Lee’s Summit R-7 School District. Not that he doesn’t have a million other things to do — or that the depth of his conversational tone is narrowed to just our school district. Allen has chaired, led and worked by example throughout Lee’s Summit in different capacities over the last two decades.

Boundary changes in Lee’s Summit are inevitable. They’re going to happen. For the betterment of our district, our buildings and our future, we must look street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood and school building by school building to realign, reorganize and best use our facilities.

A society like ours depends on an informed and caring electorate going to the polls and selecting good people to represent our interests (and the interests of the state or country as well) in the halls of power. Yet the constant barrage of negativity forces us away from the political process. So worn down are we by these horrific advertisements, that we fail to look any further into the real details of what a candidate is really all about.

Addy simply couldn’t wait to be 8. Maybe it’s a number thing. Or an age thing. She constantly talks about (and the math geek in me loves this) how many years she can count down until she can drive and “go to college.”